NEWS

Former Mount professor discusses women of philosophy

March 14, 2013

NEWBURGH, NY -

Kate Lindemann, professor emerita of philosophy at the Mount,
recently presented a lecture about female philosophers at the
college.

Mount Saint Mary College professor emerita of philosophy, Kate
Lindemann, recently visited the college to discuss female
philosophers dating back hundreds of years before their earliest
known male counterparts.

In “Taking Women Seriously: Or, How We Know the Greeks Did Not
Originate Western Philosophy,” held in honor of Women’s History
Month, Lindemann noted that Western philosophy has long been
thought to originate with the Greeks and Romans.

However, recent research proves that Greek philosophy has Arabic
roots.

According to Lindemann, there were female philosophers in Iraq,
Syria, Egypt, and Italy long before the likes of Plato or
Socrates.

Lindeman said that philosopher En Hedu’ann, an Akkadian princess
in the Sumerian city-state of Ur, predates Thales, who is credited
as being the first Greek philosopher, by more than 1,500 years.

“For her, it is the sun that is the source of all things,” said
Lindemann, of En Hedu’ann’s philosophy.

Lindemann is a leading scholar in the field of women
philosophers. She is a member of the American Philosophical
Association, the American Catholics Philosophical Association and
the Society for Women in Philosophy.

In 2011, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization sponsored her participation in the Third Assembly of
the International Network of Women Philosophers in Paris.

Lindemann earned her BA in English from Seton Hall University,
her MA in philosophy from Fordham University and her PhD at
Michigan State University, as the first woman accepted into that
school’s philosophy doctoral program.

As a senior scholar at the Mount’s Center on Aging and Policy,
Lindemann brings the topic of elderhood into philosophical
dialogue.

Courses in philosophy at the Mount cover insights of major
Western and Eastern philosophers, helping students master basic
skills of philosophical thought and an “examined life.”

The college also offers comprehensive study in health
professions, business, education, social services,
communication/media, and more, plus master’s degrees in business,
education and nursing.

The talk was sponsored by Curtin Memorial Library and the
division of philosophy and religious studies. A video of the
presentation is below.